


Home Remedies (or, How Steve Learned to Sew)

by TaleWorthTelling



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2013-12-10
Packaged: 2018-01-04 06:08:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1077522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaleWorthTelling/pseuds/TaleWorthTelling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing is, Frances isn’t a virgin. She doesn’t think Steve is either, but she’s not the kind of girl who’ll ask, and that’s just intuition. But she’s not sure how to convey to Steve just how warm she feels watching his hands flow across the pages of his sketchbooks, the way she squeezes her thighs together when she leans over his shoulder to correct his sewing and brushes too close.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home Remedies (or, How Steve Learned to Sew)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bactaqueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bactaqueen/gifts).



> Sorry for the awful title.  
> Frances is maybe 19, 20, and Steve is 20, 21, so no underage. Also, possible hand kink? I dunno, man, it happened out of nowhere. It's perhaps a bit more flowery than I would have gone (though I tried to keep it in check), but I just had trouble seeing this girl being too specific with her anatomical references or being too crass. I went for pale lavender prose.  
> Happy birthday, Bacta!

“Christ almighty, how’s that kid even still breathin’? Can’t he do the damn building a favor and hack himself to death when we ain’t all tryin’ to sleep?”

 

Frances closes her eyes and counts to ten.

 

“Henry,” her mother scolds, “don’t be cruel. You’re not the center of the universe.”

 

Her brother runs a calloused hand over his tired face, sighing, and rolls over to try to get a couple of hours rest before he has to go back out to the docks.  

 

Every year, come November, the sounds of illness ricochet through the tenement, but the noise is always loudest and most constant right above the tiny apartment that Frances shares with her mother and brother. She sometimes thinks you could predict the weather by listening for poor Steve Rogers’s latest ailment.

 

The next morning, she gathers up supplies for a folk remedy her father had taught her before he’d, well, before he’d left. She thinks it might have even worked, but it’s been years since she’s tried it. She smooths her palms down her skirt before she knocks on the door, basket handle looped over her wrist.

 

It opens almost immediately. “What?” is the harried response. This must be Bucky Barnes, the boy she’s heard about from the ladies around the building who helps out fixing things for a couple of bucks. He looks lean and strong, but mostly she’s struck by the exhaustion and stress crinkling his eyes and making a sour expression of a handsome face. He could use a wash, a shave, and about a fortnight of sleep, not to mention some clothes.

 

He notices, suddenly, that he’s opened the door in his underwear and is snapping at a lady. His eyes widen, he nudges the door mostly closed with his foot, and Frances can hear him rummaging around. When she peeks through the crack, she can see him grabbing up clothes, sniffing them and giving them a cursory glance, making displeased faces, and throwing them back down, only to move them into a basket in the corner. After a minute the door opens and Bucky is marginally better dressed, smoothing down his hair and looking more awake.

 

“I mean. Sorry. Hi. You need something, miss…?”

 

“Frances Mercer. I live below you. I don’t want to bother you, I just … I just thought, you know, with your friend, Steve, he could use a little help. Could you give this to him?” She thrusts the basket in his direction. “It’ll help with that cough.”

 

His expression softens. “Yeah. Thanks, Frances.” He pokes through the basket for a moment. When he looks up, his smile lights up his whole face; the rest of his reputation suddenly makes more sense. He drags a hand down his face. “That’s, uh, that’s very kind of you. I’ll be sure he gets it.

 

She can’t help but smile back, but then she has to get back downstairs to finish the sewing orders she hadn’t gotten to the day before.

 

-

 

She almost doesn’t hear the knocking at the door over the thundering sewing machine until her mother, arms full of scraps of fabric, asks her to take care of whoever it is. She carefully sets down the dress she’d been mending and crosses the little room to the door.

 

The first thing she notices about Steve Rogers is the intense blue of his eyes. It’s hard not to when they stare right into hers, looking a little sheepish, but still straight on.

 

“You’re Frances?” he asks. His voice is deeper than she would have imagined, husky and strong in a reassuring way. It's strange to think that she's never heard it before when she's spent all this time listening to his struggles.

 

She nods, taking in the fraying along his collar and cuffs, the halfhearted repair job someone well-meaning had obviously attempted. The shirt just about swallows him up, but you’d never know it the way he’s carrying himself.

 

“I wanted to thank you for dropping by to help me out last week,” he continues, glancing down at his shoes a moment, almost shy. “Whatever that stuff was, it worked. I, uh, finally got some rest ‘til I could get better on my own.” He pauses, chewing on his chapped lip a little. “Anyway, thank you. It was generous of you.”

 

“I’m glad to hear it worked.”

 

“You sound like you weren’t sure.”

 

“Truth be told, I wasn’t.” She’s toying with a thimble, rolling it between her fingers. “But it was worth a shot. You sounded pretty miserable and I didn’t figure I could make it worse.”

 

He looks for a moment like he’s not sure what to say to that, but then he laughs, long and hard and not at all like he’d spent the better part of a week and a half too sick to breathe. It’s a beautiful sound.

 

“You’re probably right,” he says, chortles tapering off into a couple of small coughs. “I appreciate it all the same.”

 

They smile a little at each other, awkwardly say goodbye, and then she goes back to work and he goes back to whatever it is he does. She’s heard that he’s an artist, but, then again, she’s heard that he’s kind of a bum, too. He doesn’t look like a bum to her, just a skinny guy down on his luck, but that’s gossip for you.

 

-

 

Two weeks later there’s a slip of paper waiting for her under her front door with her name on it. When she turns it over, it’s a sketch, a little smudged, with the initials S.G.R. scrawled in scratchy letters in the corner. Her breath catches when she realizes that it’s her. Standing in this very doorway, rolling her thimble between her fingers, smiling like she’s in on a great secret. She’s wearing a nurse’s cap and tipping it like a salute. There’s a playfulness, a sense of humor, that makes her smile, despite how overwhelmed she is by this gesture, despite how embarrassed by the charity she thought he might have been.

 

She tucks it into her sewing basket and grabs her yarn.

 

-

 

Between all of the work that’s come in the past couple of months, household chores, and talking Henry through his various misadventures with his latest girlfriend, she doesn’t finish the scarf for three weeks, but it’s freezing and Steve will need it and she’s crocheted little paintbrushes into it. She winds it around the door knob to Steve’s apartment early in the morning, then she creeps back downstairs to make breakfast.

 

-

 

Steve doesn’t come by until it’s almost too late at night to be decent, but when he does, he’s wearing her scarf and smiling fit to burst. “I’m sorry I couldn’t thank you earlier. I was almost late for work and I just got this job.” He’s flipping the tassels on the end of the scarf, little navy flecks of soft yarn, almost petting them. “This is beautiful. Thank you.”

 

“Your drawing was beautiful. It was sweet of you.”

 

He looks pleased with himself, but all he says is, “Wanted you to know I was thinkin’ of you.” He shrugs, pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolds it to reveal a cartoon, a little messy but clearly of her, stethoscope in one hand like a shield and sewing needle in the other like a sword, a would-be conqueror of worlds. “I didn’t really have time for a proper sketch.”

 

“I love it!” She’s reaching to take the cartoon and look at it closer when she catches him worrying the cuff of his sleeve between forefinger and thumb. “So that’s how your cuffs get that way.”

 

He frowns quickly, looking down at his sleeves.

 

She’s looking at him expectantly. “Well, come in, then. I can’t have you living in my building walking around in tatters like that. We’re running a business here.”

 

He’s not blushing, but it looks like a near thing as he hurries inside.

 

She carefully pins the cartoon to the inside lid of her sewing basket, then takes out her supplies. He’s standing there awkwardly when she turns around and gestures for him to take his shirt off. He hesitates for a moment, but he unbuttons it and slides it off his narrow shoulders when she rolls her eyes and her mouth turns up in a grin.

 

She sets about mending the cuffs and makes sure he’s paying attention. She really can’t afford to spend too much time doing this for someone who isn’t a customer, but she knows he can’t pay and she wouldn’t want him to, so the least she can do is teach him to do it properly himself.

 

“Are you the one who tried to fix it?” She’s guiding his fingers along the fabric, nudging the needle carefully in the right direction. His hands are cool but strong.

 

He squints at the shirt. “I think this one was Bucky’s work. My specialty is socks.”

 

“You mean you fix them, or…?”

 

“Well, they don’t really look like socks when I’m done with them, but there’s no holes, so … that’s fixed.”

 

She looks at him sitting at her workbench in his undershirt and slacks, fingers slender enough to fit her thimble, and she can’t help it. She laughs. “That’ll be our next lesson, then.”

 

Steve has his shirt back on by the time her mother gets home with lengths of fabric clutched reverently in her arms. He’s admiring his handiwork, looking proud of himself, and he thanks her for her time, then turns to her mother to compliment her on the skills she’s obviously passed on to her daughter. It’s been a long time since Grace Mercer smiled like a girl instead of like a proud mother, surprised but charmed, but the grin that cracks her face is worth all the scolding Frances will get from being alone with a boy. Anyone who can make her mother feel good for a moment is worth a thousand scarves.

 

-

 

The lessons continue. She shows him how to darn his socks the right way and he teaches her the finer points of perspective and balance. She knits him a pair of mittens and he gets his hands on some leftover paints from work to paint her a wilderness she’s never seen when she tells him that the city makes her claustrophobic sometimes. She hangs the postcard-sized picture under the one window in the apartment and stares at it when her fingers are stiff and cramping from working all day and she has to stop. She commiserates with Bucky over the alley scrapes Steve gets into and draws him as a knight; he stitches flowers into a handkerchief for her when she catches a cold.

 

She asks Steve out first. She’s pretty sure he’s been working up to it, but sometimes he’s too much of a gentleman for his own good, so she gets it out of the way herself. They go out when Steve has a few extra dollars tucked away for dinner, when she can spare some money for a movie and not feel guilty. Sometimes Steve is sick and he tries to hide himself away, and sometimes she lets him, but mostly she sneaks in to check on him and work her folk remedy magic until his chest eases enough that he can draw a breath. Bucky loves anyone who’ll love Steve, she knows, and the grateful looks he shoots her way when Steve isn’t looking make up for the hurt in her heart that she feels when she catches Steve looking like he’s been betrayed by his own body, almost angry.

 

-

 

The thing is, Frances isn’t a virgin. She doesn’t think Steve is either, but she’s not the kind of girl who’ll ask, and that’s just intuition. But she’s not sure how to convey to Steve just how warm she feels watching his hands flow across the pages of his sketchbooks, the way she squeezes her thighs together when she leans over his shoulder to correct his sewing and brushes too close. She hadn’t asked before; it had just happened.

 

Steve isn’t the kind of person who just happens to someone, though. Steve is a mountain you climb.

 

It ends up happening almost by accident anyway.

 

Her mother is visiting a sick aunt, Henry is working all night, and Bucky has plans with a lady friend. They’re alone in Steve’s apartment. It’s happened before, but never this late. Frances doesn’t want to be alone, though, not when it’s two in the morning and she’s sore from sewing and there’s company right here. Steve can be something of a loner, she’s noticed, but not tonight. He doesn’t tell her she should leave, and she’s not planning to.

 

He’s just over another bout of bronchitis, skinnier still and almost personally offended by the scant muscle he’s lost, and she can see that it’s frustrating him to feel weak before he’s all the way better, especially knowing as he does that it’s only going to happen again. It’s not ego; she’s seen the male ego in crisis, and this isn’t it. It’s not even his faith in himself. She’s often thought that what Steve sees when he looks at himself is much like what he sees when he looks at New York: not quite the same landscape as everyone else.

 

Tonight he’s seeing the same gray, dirty streets as the rest of them of them. She can tell.

 

She’s not trying to make a pass at him – really, she’s not – but maybe when she reaches across him for a fresh slip of paper … well, maybe she pauses to lean into the juncture of his shoulder a bit. He’s warm and he smells like charcoal dust and wool and sweat, and it’s soothing to be close. She spends so much time by herself working, or watching her mother work, that she realizes he’s the only person she’s been physically close to in a long time. A long time since she sat with someone just to feel their presence.

 

His hand tightens where it’s been resting on his pant leg, stiff fabric bunching in his grasp. He’s thinking when he glances up at her, gears turning in his mind. He slides closer on the small bench they’re sharing. He’s fever hot at hip, thigh, and knee where they press together now. She’d worry, but his eyes say he’s fine, more than fine, that he’s felt what she has for all these months now.

 

That’s as far as he goes, and she draws while she waits.

 

“You’ve really picked up sketching,” he says, voice lower than usual. “You’re a natural artist. I thought you might be, hands like yours. The clothes you make are too beautiful not to be from an artist’s hands.”

 

She takes pride in her work, the work that her mother taught her, the practicality and necessity of it, but she likes that he thinks of her as an artist. It’s not what she’d call herself.

 

“You’re a good teacher, Steve.”

 

He shakes his head, wry smile pulling his mouth up at the corner. “You haven’t seen me try to teach still life drawing to Bucky.”

 

“You draw together often?”

 

“Not since he realized I’d draw him dirty pictures myself if he asked nicely…” He freezes for a moment when he realizes what he’s said, but he doesn’t take it back.

 

She laughs. He relaxes. He’s maybe leaning into her a little. She maybe leans back.

 

He’s lighter now than he’s been all night, but there’s still a weight on him, a hollowing of his eyes and a tired resignation in the way he’s dragging himself around. His hand isn’t light on the page like it normally is, and he’s smudging more than he probably wants. Their shoulders are touching now.

 

The weight lifts a little more when he realizes that she’s drawn a cartoon of them, not dirty, but certainly racy. His eyebrows rise in her direction. She tilts her head quizzically at him and figures to hell with it. His wrist is bony under her palm, but she grasps it tightly anyway to set his hand on her waist.

 

Her face heats. She looks at him anyway. But he’s looking down at her waist where his fingers have splayed out possessively. He’s not pulling away and talking about propriety or respect for her or how he doesn’t want people to talk. Instead, he’s stroking her hipbone, rubbing slow circles into her dress. His hands aren’t warm enough to feel through the material.

 

She wants to feel the warmth of him, the nearness. She hooks her ankle around his, draws her foot up his leg lightly, turns her body to face him. There’s a whisper of fabric as he pulls his hand up gently from her waist to the swell of her ribs, close but not close enough to where she really wants it.

 

When he kisses her, his hand slides to her breast and stays there.

 

He tastes like the coffee they’d split an hour before when they’d realized that sleep wasn’t coming for either of them.  Slowly, but not tentatively, his tongue traces her lip, his other hand rising to follow the motion with his thumb. Her mouth opens wider, but instead of deepening, he’s pulling away.

 

A draft passes over them and she shivers. It’s the catalyst.

 

He turns completely to face her, swinging one leg over the bench so he straddles it, and settles both hands on her hips to pull her toward him. There’s energy in his movement now, like he’s woken from a dream. She’s practically in his lap, cradled by his thighs. This time she kisses him herself and deepens the kiss to her satisfaction, exploring his mouth until she’s good and ready to stop. It’s hard to kiss someone silly when they won’t stop smiling at you, though.

 

She pulls away to swat his shoulder, trying to be annoyed, but it doesn’t work. They’re both laughing.

 

She ups the ante when she unbuttons her simple dress.

 

He’s not laughing anymore. After another ungraceful snort, neither is she.

 

He’s practically reverent as he helps her undress, stopping every so often to run his mouth along her neck, her collarbone, her shoulder. Heat blooms where he touches her and cools wetly as he moves on to the next target.  When she’s naked before him, she stands. She fights the urge to cover herself; she’s never been timid before, and shyness is a terrible reason to sleep alone tonight, not when this is what she wants. She’s got nothing to hide from him.

 

She takes her time looking up for his reaction, wanting to play it cool, but he really has no spare attention for her face right now, not when her nipples are hardening in the brisk night air and their lives apparently depend on his complete concentration on their progress. He leans forward on the bench to take one in his mouth with a happy sigh, and she cards her fingers through his hair. One arm comes up to wrap around her waist and he pulls her closer, dropping quick kisses between her breasts before he switches to the other one.

 

She’s got her other hand on the back of his neck, gently kneading, playing with the soft tufts at his nape. She can’t see what he’s doing with his free hand, but he works it between them to trace patterns into the skin of her belly, words she couldn’t begin to guess. She shivers again, but it’s good, and he knows it. He smiles against her chest.

 

The floor creaks when he shifts to stand up, when he guides her backward toward the bed he shares with Bucky. The springs protest, too, when he taps her hip and she falls onto the mattress.

 

She’s naked, stretched out on his bed, and he’s looming above her, fully clothed. The ways he stands, the way she feels, he could be a foot taller, so much broader, and he couldn’t impose half of the intensity radiating from him now.

 

She reaches out to lay her hand on his belly, feel the slight dip. He sucks in a breath and doesn’t move. When she fingers the buttons of his shirt, he pulls it off, but he’s moving slower, looking smaller, and she doesn’t like it. Her Steve is big in spirit and fills a room. He’d been there a moment ago.

 

He gains confidence when he nudges her up the bed and leans down to mouth patterns into her skin again, this time from hip to hip. His fingers are painting her inner thighs with his thoughts. She knows he’s drawing letters, but she can’t tell which. They’re his to say or not.

 

He’s not undressed, though, and this time she tugs up his undershirt herself. He stiffens.

 

He lets her, though.

 

She’s not trying to draw attention to his skinny chest and pointy ribs when she runs her hands along his back and shoulders, but it’s hard to not notice them, and it makes her sad for a moment, because she knows it makes him sad sometimes. She gets over it quickly, but he’s noticed her noticing, and she can feel him closing a little.

 

“Steve,” she says, imploring. She’s not sure what to say. “It’s okay. You’re all I need.”

 

“Don’t worry about it,” he murmurs. It’s maybe an apology, maybe a request.

 

They move on.

 

She was right, then, that he’s done this before, because he’s finished worshipping her for the time being, and when he gets right down to it, she’s almost overwhelmed. His tongue is soft and lapping one moment, pointed and dragging the next, and when it dips into her, she squeezes her eyes shut and holds her breath. No one did this for her those other times.

 

One hand stops its verse on her skin to carefully press her chest. The message is clear: _breathe, Frances_. She remembers to.

 

Instead of going back to her thigh, those clever fingers trail down to where his mouth meets her body. It’s easy to work in two of them, pressure up and in and stroking, and when she whimpers a little he takes it a step farther. His lips move up to kiss her mound, and he’s clearly taking a moment to inhale the scent of her from her auburn curls. Then he mouths at the spot below, the place that makes her whole body jump. He takes his other hand away from her leg as well to press on either side of it, two fingers framing her, making mild rocking motions.

 

Her legs are splayed out, but it’s hard fighting the urge to squeeze them together, muscles clenching and searching, so she wraps one up along his side, tightening what she can. He exhales loudly, clearly needing a moment, and his breath on her wet center is a peculiar sensation, but mostly a tease. She wriggles.

 

He’s not smirking, but he looks like he wants to when he glances up her body, so she tugs on his hair a little. His eyes slip closed, so she tugs again, and she knows it’s good.

 

Then he gets back to work. He’s a little overeager, getting excited by how excited he’s making her, and  when he presses on that spot, right in the center instead of around, she jumps again, this time in the bad way, waves of pure nerve response but not exactly pleasure shooting through her. Her heel accidentally jams into his spine.

 

He kisses the crease of her leg in apology, massages her thighs. This time when he starts again he’s in the right place.

 

She’s warm all over, getting higher and higher, fingers creeping into his hair again to alternately massage his scalp and tug just a little. She sinks down into the bed even further, tilting her pelvis up. He takes away the hand at her front to slide it under her rear and support her, cupping her cheeks in turn. The other hand, still inside her, works faster; his tongue presses harder, looping in circles, and she thinks she can hear him whispering something muffled to himself, but it’s not important, nothing is important except that he keep touching her, in that same place, that same pressure, that he doesn’t move, right there …

 

Her whole body straightens, stiffens, and she holds herself there, a low sound pouring from her throat.

 

Her breasts heave as she comes down to find that he’s once again watching them, admiring the show. She huffs a weak laugh, nudges his shoulder with her knee when he doesn’t move right away. He drops a kiss on her hip before he shimmies up to lay with her, resting his head on her shoulder.

 

When her booming heart slows and their breaths have synced, she furrows her brow in dawning realization. “You were spelling anatomy, weren’t you?”

 

He shrugs a little, shameless. “They make you learn it in art school. I always knew it’d come in handy. I think it’s the unusual letters that make Latin … uniquely suited to the activity. Take trapezius, for example—”

 

She kisses him, and the shared taste of her on his tongue silences him.

 

He’s still wearing his slacks, and that’s just silly. Between the two of them, her hands are cleaner, so she reaches down to divest him of them.

 

He sucks in a small breath. Even though he doesn’t stop her, she can feel him tense, and she remembers now. She takes her time, cupping him, softly kneading, scratching her nails along the skin of his waist, before she goes near the buttons. He almost doesn’t notice her opening his pants, but when he bites his lip, she can tell the spell is broken.

 

He’s naked before her now and she likes what she sees, the strength of these wiry muscles that carry him so dignified, the lithe grace with which his slender form moves, the small scars from alley scrapes she know he can’t resist getting involved in. This is the body that does those things, that houses the mind she can’t resist learning from and teaching. This body has her respect, and she loves it. She’ll make him see.

 

She’d pulled her scrap basket upstairs with her for him to practice earlier in the evening, and she stands reluctantly now to go to it. This time instead of handing over the blue scrap she’s selected, she cautiously winds it around his eyes, tying a loose knot.

 

“Forget what you look like for a minute, Steve. Just feel this.”

 

When he relaxes into her touch, leaves the blindfold where it is, her heart swells in her breast. This is trust like he rarely has cause to show.

 

She’ll give him this. He’ll feel what he means to her, the companionship and attention she’d been craving and didn’t even know before he’d come along. The touch she’d needed.

 

She’s lays across him, thighs shiny with slick spread over his middle, poised above the aching line of him, and kisses his neck. She’s perhaps softer with her exploration than he, but no less purposeful. No less thorough. She lavishes every inch of his chest with her mouth, some with her tongue, until he’s squirming a little, shifting his hips back and forth subtly.

 

Instead of going down, she works her way back up, nipping at his collarbone, mouthing his shoulder, kissing down his arm ‘til her lips rest at his hand. Here she’s tender. She loves these hands. Her tongue carefully traces between his fingers, and he laughs like he’s ticklish. She interlocks her fingers with his other hand and concentrates on the one she’s tending to. His thumb finds its way to her mouth like it belongs there, so she sucks for a moment, lets its weight rest on her swollen bottom lip, before she pulls back to repeat the whole thing on his other arm.

 

He’s relaxed now, practically melting into the bed. Her fingertips skim down his torso ‘til they rest on his pelvis. She moves down to run her tongue along his length, but the moment he senses her breath on him, he shifts his hips away, works his fingers into her hair.

 

He can’t see her looking up at him, but he shakes his head a little anyway. “You don’t have to do that.”

 

What he means to say is that he respects her too much to ask her to do that, but if it means so much to him, she’ll abide. She grips him instead. He fills her hand perfectly, bigger than she’d have thought (and definitely bigger than the crasser neighborhood girls had teased when he wasn’t around to hear).

 

“Do you…” She doesn’t quite lose her nerve, but she falters a moment, playing with his foreskin a moment almost like the nervous gesture of her rolling thimble. “Steve, do you have anything…?”

 

He colors a little. “Uh, no. Damn.” He sighs. “It’s … been a while. I don’t … This doesn’t happen that often, so … I could maybe look in Bucky’s drawer… ”

 

“It’s okay,” she says. “We’ve got time.” She strokes for another minute, slowly, ever so slowly, sliding backward. Too slow for him to notice when she’s distracting him so. When her backside makes contact with his searing flesh … well, the sound he makes is beautiful. He’s snug between her cheeks, but nowhere near sliding in. This’ll do the trick.

 

She only has to rock against him for a minute before he gets the idea, wraps his hands around her waist to help pull her along and push her back while he ruts his hips. It’s a little dry, maybe too dry. She makes a long, rolling motion with her hips, just enough to rest her wetness over him, let him glide between her folds for a few seconds, get him nice and glossy for the end of the show.

 

He moans hoarsely, almost a keening sound, surging up to kiss her again (and almost getting her in the nose because of the blindfold) and clutch at her shoulder, keeping one guiding hand on her waist. He can’t do much in this position, sitting up chest to chest, but she’s got it covered. She speeds up, grinding back hard into him, resting more weight on him, reaching back to press him tightly between her cheeks until he stops making any sound. She feels his wetness.

 

They both relax.

 

He reaches up to undo the blindfold himself after a moment, but not before smoothing a slightly sticky (from her, she realizes) palm down her face, cupping her chin. After he takes it off, the look he levels her with takes her breath away. The weight is gone from his shoulders, at least for tonight.

 

He nudges her off of him to get a towel for them, wets it in the sink, carefully cleans her first, then himself. She glances down at her hand when she finds it sticky as well, and when she knows he’s not looking, she sneaks a taste. It’s not horrible. Maybe they’ll try it another day.

 

He groans behind her, so she turns around. He’s staring at the blanket, color rising high on his cheeks. “Maybe Bucky won’t ask,” he says.

 

They spend the night cleaning the blanket and burst out laughing when Bucky comes home the next morning and asks why their blanket is hanging out on the clothesline when laundry day isn’t ‘til Tuesday.

**Author's Note:**

> And here endeth my sojourn into the world of porn-writing.


End file.
